In the interests of fairness, I'm obligated to point this out. Truth be told, I'd struggle not to fucking deck him if I saw him. He's got one of those really punchable faces, and an attitude like a 'BOOT GOES HERE' sign on his arse.

There's only so many things a person can say to a reporter and stay among the ranks of the recognisably sane. This isn't one of them:

Green, 60, is founder and director of Christian Voice, a fundamentalist group he set up in 1994, whose website thunders against the vices — family breakdown, crime, ­immorality and drink among them — that are ruining the lives of ‘real people’. Green’s ­pronouncements are often outrageous. For example, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 and killed more than 1,600 people, he claimed it was a result of God’s wrath and had purified the city.

Thankfully, the fucker doesn't have the ear of any MPs I know of, so that's something at least. But after dealing with some of the religious nutcases I see in news from other parts of the world, this guy - while horrible in his own way - just seems kind of a mediocre effort in terms of craziness. I've read of rabid theocrat anti-Semites advising world leaders, children being burned at the fucking stake after someone accused them of witchcraft, babies being held under faucets by Mormons to get them used to punishment for disobedience, good men being beaten to death for daring to question the idea of capital punishment for homosexuality, other good men being shot by their own security guards because they thought it was a bit over the top to execute atheists...this guy's craziness doesn't begin to compare. That said, he's a piece of shit and I'll be glad when he's fucking dead. Because I'm just like that sometimes.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

It's great news for the intellectually neutered in Oklahoma this week, as Republican (again) State Rep (again) Sally Kern has given a press release defending her bill set to 'critique' (again) the theory of evolution in OK classrooms (why is it always the Republican state reps who come out with the most fucking batshit insane ideas ever to get rationalised by frothing limp-dicked cable news pundits*?)

It reads, “At the same time, teachers and students should be free to discuss critiques of the theory and no student should ever be penalized for personal views on this issue..."

Taken broadly (which is how it will be taken, the bastards) this essentially says that if a kid had been brainwashed into creationism by family or teachers and then proceeds to cite Genesis in a high school biology exam, that student legally could not be given a lower grade to reflect the lower percentage of knowledge in their answers. They wouldn't be able to mark shit as factually wrong if the students claimed their church said it. There are probably worse connotations to something like this, but when you take something as nebulous as 'personal views on the subject' and force an education system to equate those views with FACTS, then you're really basically saying 'Don't You Dare Fail Our Little Leviticus In Biology'.

Who the hell drafts a bill to put this concept into law? There are three options: political opportunists looking for the Stupid Evil Joe Fuckface Sportsbar vote, or genuine theocrats looking to replace the Constitution with the rule of what would basically be a white Taliban, or - worst of all - both at once, a group I tend to classify as 'evil fucking idiots' when I have to classify them at all.

This shit's been smacked down since the Dover decision, and damn fucking right, too. Bad enough that the stinking, shoeless foot of the Mythical Real American Shitkicker is always scrabbling for a toehold in schools, but then stupid shitheads like this come along and provide custom-made places for that pungent foot to set down - including spaces for the webs between the toes.

Kern said her bill clearly states that it is not an endorsement of any religious belief. HB 1551, Section 2, Para. E, reads: “The provisions of the Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act shall only protect the teaching of scientific information, and shall not be construed to promote any religious or nonreligious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or nonbeliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.”

Yeah, fucking right. It clearly states it doesn't endorse a religion. Let's think; what other groups are trying to poke holes in the titanium replica of Hadrian's Wall that is the fact of evolution, aside from religious fundamentalists? Why NONE! How queer. For fuck's sake, even countries with real, actual official state religions know it's true. Everything that's ever lived has proven it true through one simple fact: genetics. We don't even NEED fossils at this point - genetics alone prove common descent. Yet these pieces of shit are still trying to bring their ancient, creaking, rusting god to bear on established facts so they can pull the trigger.

This is what happened to Baghdad! Not in fucking 2003, either! Centuries back, Baghdad was actually the centre of the scientific world (interesting fact: after 9/11, when Bush started his Us Versus Them rhetoric, he claimed 'our god is the god who named the stars'...but if you take a look at the recorded names of stars visible with the naked eye, two thirds of them have Arabic names). When fundamentalist Islam started making its play for power in the Middle East, all of Baghdad's learning was wiped out in a shitstorm of heresy-burning. That is frighteningly similar to what's been illustrated here, and elsewhere: organised religion, no matter what kind, tries to eradicate knowledge to keep its power and worship intact.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

A letter's been found from the Vatican to Irish bishops, basically ordering them not to report child-raping clergy to the police. Got the bastards.

I've been waiting for this for years. The Vatican's spent a very long time telling everyone it didn't do exactly this shit. They're going to bleed money really fucking quick now, not least because they've now been empirically, publicly proven as liars and hypocrites on this topic. They've declined to comment on it, which the armchair detective in me is inclined to stomp on as a dead giveaway, but even discounting that (since jumping all over 'no comment' is how tabloids do shit, and even profane slobs like me have standards) they're basically bang to rights here. Ratzi would be implicated too, since his department was the group in charge of investigating this shit for years.

Let's see how this pans out...I can't wait until Bill Donohue gets hit in the face with this shit.

Just a quick thought about something that's started to piss me right off recently.

None of the things I'll mention are particularly recent, but considering them together only started when I was watching some awesome Hitchslaps (short clips of Christopher Hitchens laying the smackdown on someone for following a concept that's either immoral or bloody stupid); while most of the time his attitude isn't something I'd emulate toward people's personal faiths since it's all dependent on that person, institutionalised religion is every bit as foul to me as it is to him.

Anyway. One of these clips that really got to me was Hitch being interviewed on Fox following the death of Jerry Falwell, who is quite possibly the poster child for 'utter fucking dick' in America for the 1970s (although there were so many at the time, this is debatable); Hitch is told he's not a nice person, essentially, for being happy that Falwell died. Now I know some of the things Falwell did, although for the sake of my sanity I won't read too much of it. This son of a bitch was a fervent theocrat, and put even more effort into dodging the US Constitution's First Amendment - for readers outside the US, that's that pesky part about religion not being allowed to run America* - than I put into avoiding reality TV. And that's saying something. He was a raging anti-Semite and anti-feminist, declaring that Jews are "spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior" and that women "need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home", as well as blaming 9/11 on everyone in America who didn't think evangelists should be in charge. He was a piece of shit and I'm glad he's fucking dead. So is Hitchens, and openly said so, and suddenly he's accused of speaking ill of the dead.

And here's my main point. What is this shit? Speaking ill of the dead? What, are they more sensitive to criticism now that they're fucking dead? Hitch's reaction to Falwell finally dying is a perfect example of this - Falwell's family believe that anything not Christian is evil and must be purged from America, I doubt they fucking care about Christopher's approval, but no! Can't say bad things about people after they die! Apparently they can hear it, or it makes people around you uncomfortable or some silly shite. Grow the fuck up.

What would it take? What would someone need to do, for it to be acceptable to be happy they've died? I'm gonna Godwin this right out of the gate - Adolf Hitler was a piece of shit too, and I'm glad he's also dead. Hell, the only material differences I can find at a glance between Falwell and Hitler was their country of origin, their age, which particular denomination of Christianity they followed and the fact that Hitler got control of an army.

So given that Falwell basically spent his life preaching that the only way to go to heaven was to treat certain groups as subhuman - an attitude otherwise not seen in American politics since South Carolina cited the Bible's support of slavery in the document announcing their secession from the Union, and the start of the civil war - is it somehow not enough to warrant calling him a cockmongler after he's dead?

Fuck that. I'll speak ill of bastards, dead or alive. Someone has to.

*Stop laughing at the back there. I know, I know - despite what it looks like, religions are legally not allowed to run the United States. Stunned me too when I first heard about it, but it begs the question - if this is what it's like when organised Christians aren't allowed control over America, what would it be like if they were?

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Salman Taseer, governor of the Pakistani province of Punjab, was murdered by one of his own security guards over his opposition to the death penalty for blasphemers. This comes in the middle of the furore over Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian accused of blasphemy by people who didn't like her ('cause we all know a zealot with a grudge is a perfect eyewitness when you want to avoid bias). Now it seems the screaming, reeking bastards who howl for the blood of their faith's critics have gone one step further and started murdering anyone who tells them to calm down. Wonderfully fucking sane reaction there.

Five hundred scholars from the moderate Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims have warned that anyone who expresses grief over the assassination could suffer the same fate.

"No Muslim should attend the funeral or even try to pray for Salman Taseer or even express any kind of regret or sympathy over the incident," said the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan in a statement.

It said anyone who expressed sympathy over the death of a blasphemer was also committing blasphemy.

I swear to fuck, it's days like this when the contraceptive bomb and other inhumane borderline-genocidal shit almost looks tempting. Because these are the Enemy. A church on the back foot, like the Catholics at the minute, behaves in as conciliatory a manner as possible - because it needs a power base more than anything, like a reality TV show needs an audience base. When it's in power, however...well, a quick search on the word 'inquisition' will show you the Catholic track record for benevolent rule.* Islam, on the other hand, has decided to adopt a strategy that goes entirely against its own name - fuck submission, let's machine-gun anyone who tries any of that smarty-pants logic or that goddamn hippie bleeding-heart 'tolerance' bullshit.

Salman Taseer did what few people dare - he worked against demonstrably dangerous, armed people with a track record of going completely bugfuck insane over people even having an opinion different to theirs. He got his head blown off because he stood tall in a screaming shitstorm and dared to call it what it is. The murderer confessed with a smug fucking grin on his punchable fucking face, the priests have declared it a capital offence against the church if anyone mourns or goes to the funeral, and this act of FUCKING TERRORISM will sink among the waves of shit.

Which is more than we can hope the fundies would do.

*For a more modern look at the worldview of organised Christianity when it thinks it has the political and moral high ground, your quotation search for the day is 'Ann Coulter'. Make sure to watch your blood pressure, this bitch is dangerous.